Videos

Dr David Hillson, The Risk Doctor, is well-known as an excellent speaker, presenter and trainer. Countless individuals, teams and organisations have benefited from his blend of thought-leadership with practical application, presented in an accessible style that combines clarity with humour. David’s speaking is guided by the Risk Doctor motto: “Understand profoundly so you can explain simply”.

Here you can see the Risk Doctor in action, with videos ranging from short briefings through focused interviews to full-length presentations. If you like what you see, click here to invite David Hillson to present at your event.

Slides are available on request for many of these video presentations. Click here to request a copy of slides for a particular video.

David Hillson was interviewed after presenting the keynote at the Italia Risk Forum in Reggio Emilia in February 2016. Here he discusses the importance of risk-taking for entrepreneurs. He also considers how risk-based thinking addresses risk in nations, society and life.

Humour is a powerful tool in a business setting, but only if it's used well. In this short video, David Hillson, The Risk Doctor, explores how to use humour appropriately, including choosing the right level of humour for the audience, and being sensitive to cultural differences. Use humour to connect , and have fun doing it!

The EPPM Board is a prestigious international steering group of senior executives, academics and industry experts. Their discussions address how the C-level can ensure that the project portfolio remains a key strategic asset. The February 2014 sitting of The EPPM Board explored what specific risk insights might best serve the C-suite when they are developing the strategic outlook for the organisation. In this interview, David Hillson, The Risk Doctor, gives his perspective.

People adopt different attitudes when they face situations that are risky and important, based on their perception of uncertainty. This influences their risk-taking behaviour and decision-making. David Hillson reveals to Dr Andrew Delo why this matters and how it can be managed.

David Hillson uses this PM Channel interview to explore the hot topic of risk appetite with Dr Andrew Delo. Risk appetite is often confused with other risk terms. David cuts through the confusion with clear definitions, and explains how a right understanding of risk appetite can help us to take the right risks safely.

This closing keynote was presented by David Hillson at the OpenPM2 2018 Conference hosted in Brussels by the European Commission. After making the case for including opportunity in the concept of risk, David explores elements of the mindset required to find and capture opportunities.

How to manage the risks you didn’t know you were taking [full] (55:00)

In his opening keynote for PMexpo 2017 in Rome in October 2017, David Hillson aimed to expand the way we think about risk so that we can improve the way we manage it in practice. By exploring the full implications of what “uncertainty that matters” really means, we can start to manage the real risks to our projects, including the ones that (until now) we didn't know we were taking.

Risk Management and Earned Value Management are both used to improve project decision-making and control. But they are rarely used together. In this presentation David Hillson offers practical advice on how to interface these two powerful approaches.

Most people think of risks as uncertain negative future events (“threats”), but they include much more than that. David Hillson draws on leading thinking and current best practice to explore the other types of risk that are usually missed from the typical risk process. He also explains the new concept of “overall risk” which is nearly always overlooked. Finally, of course, David reminds us not to forget risks with positive impacts (“opportunities”).

Dr David Hillson discusses key issues in project risk management with Dr Frank Anbari of Drexel University, ending with his view on how risk management might develop in the near future. The conversation also covers why risk includes opportunity, how risk is viewed in different national and organisational cultures, and how to develop a mature risk culture, as well as a little of the Risk Doctor’s background.

This interview was conducted at Drexel in Philadelphia in January 2017.

David Hillson was the keynote speaker for an annual conference of church leaders held in Trinidad in January 2017. This talk considers risk management and faith as alternative ways of addressing the uncertain future, and asks whether there is any advantage in having faith in an uncertain world. David concludes that a balanced approach is best, but this requires wisdom and maturity.

Not all risk is bad. Risk is supposed to include opportunities, but most people still focus only on threats. Why? Discover how to unlock management of opportunity using human motivation theory (Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”) and the latest ideas in information science (memetic engineering). This talk was presented in Moscow in December 2016.

This talk was given to an audience of farm business managers at the Pacific Agriculture Show in Abbotsford, BC, Canada, in January 2017. It formed part of the "Habits for Successful Farm Business Managers" session, and focused on how to find and capture opportunities in the farming sector.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) do vital work in the world's trouble spots, and are constantly exposed to high levels of risk. In May 2016 in Barcelona, David Hillson addressed the annual gathering of MSF project managers, suggesting how risk-based thinking might help them succeed more often. This recording captures his closing keynote presentation.

David Hillson delivered a half-day risk workshop in Tehran in February 2016 for about 200 project management professionals. In this extract from the introduction, he outlines the basic principles of risk and summarises the risk process, before focusing on how to identify real risks and develop effective responses.

Many future uncertainties are unknowable, leading to emergent risks that catch us unawares. These emergent risks are popularly known as Black Swans, and it is very hard for us to prepare for them in advance. Or is it? David Hillson’s keynote at the 11th International Iranian Project Management Conference in Tehran in February 2016 explains how to kill Black Swans before they kill you.

How risky is your project? The answer is not found in the risk register or heatmap, which deal only with individual risks. Instead we need a way of determining the overall riskiness of a project. David Hillson explains here why QRA is the answer. Most people use QRA to identify the most important individual risks. Here David explains how to use it to quantify overall project risk exposure.

David Hillson presented this keynote at a conference in Athens in November 2015, attended by government and business leaders and hosted by the PMI Greece Chapter. He takes a risk-based look at how Greece might approach the uncertain future, with a particular focus on dealing with emergent risks. David closed by challenging the many project managers in the audience to be change agents in the future reconstruction of Greece, within the context of national rebuilding.

If risk is "uncertainty that matters", how can we be sure that we consider all forms of uncertainty, as well as all types of mattering? In this keynote presentation to the 15th International PM Conference of the PMI Arabian Gulf Chapter held in Bahrain in January 2015, David Hillson discusses new ideas about the nature of risk in projects and how it should be managed.

This presentation was the closing keynote for the Second Global ERM Online Symposium 2014 in May 2014. David Hillson, The Risk Doctor, looks at the origin of culture from first principles before applying the resulting insights to risk culture. Understand the relationship between Attitude, Behaviour and Culture through the ABC Model. Discover what a good risk culture looks like, and how you can get one.

David Hillson spoke on the topic of risk in nation-building at the Nigerian Risk Awards dinner in Lagos in December 2013. David focuses on the Objectives of nation-building, Origins of risks to nation-building, and Ownership of nation-building risks. Although the speech was delivered in Nigeria, these principles apply to building any nation - including yours!

The Australian/New Zealand Institute of Insurance & Finance (ANZIIF) launched its Risk Management Faculty in Sydney in September 2013. David Hillson, the Risk Doctor, was the invited guest speaker for this event. In this talk David challenges our limited thinking about risk, and explains how a broader concept of risk can lead to more effective risk management, and hence more successful projects and businesses.

Programmes are risky undertakings and require proactive risk management, but programmes are not large projects, and programme risk management is different from project risk management. In this presentation at ProjectControlsExpo 2013 in London, David Hillson, The Risk Doctor, explores the unique and specific characteristics of managing programme risk, providing a clear understanding of the challenge as well as practical guidelines to deal with it.

David Hillson presented on this topic at the inaugural meeting of the PMI UK Chapter Oxford Branch in November 2012. He suggests that we need to improve how we think about risk, the process we use to manage it, and the way we consider the people aspects. If risk is not managed effectively on your projects, this talk will help you do better next time.

Recorded on 6 June 2006 (666!) in Munich, David Hillson outlines current best practice, then presents three areas in which risk management might develop in the short to medium term: integrating risk management with the wider business; improving depth and breadth of analysis; and including behavioural aspects in the risk process.

This is the first in a video series linked to David Hillson's latest book “The Risk Doctor's Cures for Common Risk Ailments”. In this interview with Ruth Murray-Webster, David Hillson explores the concept of “risk ailments”, and explains how medical metaphors can help us to understand and address real problems with managing risk.

In this short video, David Hillson discusses risk blindness, where people are unaware of the risks they are facing, leading them to walk into avoidable threats and to miss opportunities they could have captured.

All risk is bad and must be avoided or minimised at all costs. The only uncertainties that matter are risks that could cause delay or increase cost or cause accidents or damage reputation. If this is your view, you may be risk-depressed. Help is at hand!

Risk cognitive confusion occurs when we confuse risks with things that are not risks, then we treat the non-risks as if they really were uncertainties that matter. Then the risk process doesn’t work well, because it’s focused on the wrong things. Clear the confusion by finding your “real risks”!

Risk bipolar disorder occurs when individuals and organisations flip-flop rapidly between different attitudes to risk, leading to inappropriate risk-taking, and making it hard to predict how they’ll react in any given situation.

Risk obesity happens when an organisation takes on too much risk as a result of uncontrolled risk appetite. We need to take the right amount of risk – the amount that we can digest and deal with effectively. Carrying excessive risk exposure will make us inflexible and slow to react when new risks arise.

In this closing video in the Common Risk Ailments series, David Hillson & Ruth Murray-Webster discuss how to stay "risk-healthy". Health is more than the absence of disease, and risk-health gives us the ability to survive and thrive in an uncertain world. Find out more here, with full details in David's book "The Risk Doctor's Cures for Common Risk Ailments".